Review (No Spoilers): Guards! Guards!
Guards! Guards! is the first book in the City Watch sub-series of Discworld and my first venture into the Discworld universe. I’m happy to say I really enjoyed it! I’m excited to dive into more books set in this strange world.
How funny a book feels really depends on the reader. For me, some jokes landed better than others, but I laughed several times. Pratchett has a way of writing that feels both silly and sharp at the same time. This is a cosy, clever, and endearingly silly read that weaves in sharp social commentary without ever losing the book’s charm.
One of the standout elements is the setting. Ankh-Morpork is delightfully absurd, full of legalised guilds for thieves and assassins, and a Night Watch that mostly avoids doing anything that might actually require… well, watching. Into this walks Carrot, an idealistic young man raised by dwarfs, who earnestly believes in law, order, and doing what’s right. His attempts to uphold justice in a city that has largely abandoned the concept are both funny and oddly touching.
A minor complaint is that we don’t see much of the main character, Vimes, at the start. But this seems intentional since Pratchett loves to play with the classical fantasy tropes. While the characters are fairly flat, they work well as exaggerated caricatures. This might be a drawback in another kind of book, but it suits the satirical tone here. They’re fun, ridiculous, and memorable.
The following quotes/passages contain some minor spoilers.
They avoided one another’s faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I’ll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I’m not stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard…
No one said anything. The cowards, thought each man.
“How do you spell ‘contravention’?” said Carrot, turning over a page.
“I don’t,” said Nobby, pushing through the crowds.
Down there – he said – are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no.
Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.
And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.
A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn’t really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.
There were times where an ape had to do what a man had to do.
The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.
But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.
You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away.
